Pixologic has made its first announcement about the next version of its ZBrush 3D painting software, which is to ship for Windows on May 15 -- with a Mac version to follow.

The news was posted to the ZBrushCentral user forum by ZBrush creator and Pixologic founder Ofer Alon.

"ZBrush 3 continues our development by first and foremost putting the artist in an immersive digital sculpting environment," he says. "We have boosted ZBrush's speed, refined its functionality as well as expanded its capability by adding real-time shadows, real-time material capture and render (MatCap), [and] full 3D sculpting and texturing with alphas and textures."